


frozen on a circuit (no grounds against lightning)

by beezy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pseudo-Science, references to masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:50:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beezy/pseuds/beezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has her assumptions regarding what this is all about, side-eyeing the men with blue eyes, the girls with chipper smiles, the lines of strangers sneaking out the door each morning, and Tony takes small comfort from the fact that at least this time if Pepper had to guess then she’d guess <i>wrong</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	frozen on a circuit (no grounds against lightning)

How it starts is this six foot ten, six foot twenty blond motherfucker goes and kidnaps the slicked-back asshole messing around with SHIELD, and when Tony goes to chase them down this same motherfucker sends a five hundred-thousand volt arc of electricity ricocheting down Tony’s spine. Tony’s HUD shrieks alarm in shades of white and red, and his suit’s power supply starts counting up from fifty to one hundred, two hundred, digits whirring, all in all clocking in at a cool four hundred percent. The sensors are screaming out one last Hail Mary before Tony lines up a shot and fires a ‘fuck you’ at this guy.

This guy, this seven foot tall blond surfer boy with a pouty mouth and storm-coloured eyes, this fucking guy gets shot through six spans of trees—chop chop timber—and _still_ he has the nerve to get back on his feet again, beckoning for another round.

“Do not touch me again,” the guy had told him, so back at base, when the lines of good versus evil were drawn and they turned out solidly on the same side, Tony made sure to tap the guy twice on the arm just to show there were no hard feelings, bud.

Asshole. That guy, he fried half the circuitry in Tony’s suit, left the other half wishing it was dead, and still Tony can’t help but wonder what caused such a kicked puppy look in those dumb blue eyes.

Cue Manhattan, some shit about aliens and nuclear explosions, some people almost dying and some reluctant saviour-types going out afterwards for greasy shawarma. Take these weary souls back to base and let them rest, let them get to know each other, let them find their common traits and exactly how much they can’t stand each other. Watch them fester under each other’s skins, growing there like fungus, itching like a bad haircut that can’t grow out fast enough. Make them family, basically. The people you don’t want to be without.

This blond guy, Thor, he wasn’t there at Stark Tower at first. He left with the slicked-back asshole—his brother, who knew—zipping off to Omicron Five or wherever the hell these guys happen to call home. This guy, he comes back a few months later, appearing in some cosmic laser light spectacle and acting like no time has passed at all. Bright eyes, wide smiles. He could vaporize vampires with the glow beaming off his body, but Tony just adjusts his shades and slouches down in his seat, pretending like he’s not watching from the corner of his eye every time Thor is buddy-buddy with everybody except him. Steve loves him, the stupid traitorous bastard, and when asked even Bruce gives a shy grin and admits he’s charming. So this guy, this too-good for nothing asshole, he walks around SHIELD like he belongs there, like he’s not some eight foot tall alien god-prince playing cop to a backwater world filled with ‘mortals’, as he tends to call them.

Like Tony needed any more reminders that he’s falling apart, bit by bit, the rheumy old eyes of time staring down his back and gumming slow bites from his vitality. They’re all going down, day by day, but this guy, this blond surfer bro, he wears forever like he’s a granite countertop, like he’s the fucking _mountaintop_ they carved the granite from. Tony and Nat, Bruce and Clint, they’re all linoleum standing next to this guy, tissue-thin bodies no better than wallpaper, than background noise, that weird hum you only hear when the power goes out and you are truly, absolutely alone.

Tony goes home alone most nights, these days. He’s given up the women for now, sent them packing as soon as he realised there was a recurring pattern to the tall, leggy blondes he kept picking out, all those guys with broad shoulders and slim waists he kept screwing into mattresses. He stopped the whoring but kept the boozing, for sure, ramped it up a little, even, and Pepper notes this one day by dully asking him, “What is it this time?”

She has her assumptions regarding what this is all about, side-eyeing the men with blue eyes, the girls with chipper smiles, the lines of strangers sneaking out the door each morning, and Tony takes small comfort from the fact that at least this time if Pepper had to guess then she’d guess _wrong_.

Not everything the matter with Tony ties back to Cap and his weird knot of daddy issues, thank you very much. Tony could find new issues all on his own.

“Why does it have to be something?” he asks her irritably, choking back the coffee he managed to make after his eighteenth straight hour of consciousness. It tastes like it’s been scraped out of a tin and shellacked into a mug. He drags a stirring rod through it, and the rod remains upright even after he’s let go, alert like some pathetic _that’s disgusting Tony how can you even think of drinking that_ flagpole. Fantastic.

Pepper rolls her eyes. “Don’t pretend like this isn’t a thing you do. You do this. You give up people, all social contact, whenever something’s bothering you. You give it up, and you get a project instead. So what is it this time?”

It’s Tony’s turn to roll his eyes. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Not yet.”

“Well, tell me when it is, okay?” Pepper looks him up and down, wary. “And don’t kill yourself doing it, alright? You have to sleep sometime; you’re only human.”

Yeah, Tony is, but this guy, this fucking guy, he’s not.

This guy, he carries a weapon named Mower or Mewmew or Mulder or whatever, walks around with this hammer like it’s commonplace to use a short-ass piece of metal to bludgeon shit to death. He throws it, it comes back. He gets hit by something too strong to single-handedly fight, he calls down _lightning_ to burn out that motherfucker’s ass.

Tony likes to think it was a compliment, him having to use the static of a storm to power down Tony’s suit. Except it didn’t power down, not right away. It did the opposite, actually, ramped up its forces to four times the max. _Then_ it fried. A subtle distinction, but important.

That voltage, that extra current, that repulsor Tony fired—it could all come in handy on the tail end of a fight he’s about to lose. Tony doesn’t like finding himself in fights like that, so he’s going to try and tweak the odds. Bend the rules. Hope they don’t break.

So on the third week of trying, after the coffee grounds he liked were all used up, after he had Pepper calling the suppliers to find out why all the shipments seemed to be out of stock or back-ordered or kidnapped by Columbian guerrillas, he doesn’t fucking know, on that third week Natasha leads this little brunette something-something down to his workshop in Stark Tower, and this something-something has something to say.

“You’re Tony Stark, right? I’m Jane,” she says, holding out her hand cordially. “Pepper tells me you have a project?”

Pepper’s telling too many people too many things, that’s what Tony could say. But he wipes his grease-covered hands across his shirt and takes hers, pumping it once, curt, before asking, “Who are you?”

“I’m the astrophysicist,” she says cheerily, adding, “Thor’s girlfriend,” when all that garnered was a blank look, and Tony would have lost _millions_ on the bets he would’ve made. His 401k, his Stark Industries stock calls, every single one of his premium private jets, they would’ve all gone down the drain. No way he’d ever guess this little thing belonged with _him_.

Jane gets to telling him why she’s here, her words tripping over themselves in her eagerness to explain. Something about applied physics, about electrical conductors and methods of amperage evolution. Between the lines of what she’s saying are all the ways Pepper worries about him, and Tony takes bitter solace in that. Between Steve and Bruce, Clint and Natasha, the blond motherfucker and his girlfriend, Tony’s been feeling a little odd man out lately.

Jane talks too much when she’s excited; she cuts into his thinking time by asking questions he shouldn’t have to bother explaining because _he_ already knows the answers, thank you very much, but _she_ needs to know these things in order to program the matrices he’ll be running the suit off of when the power kicks up a thousand notches. She talks about her research into wormholes, her time abroad in Europe, her boyfriend. She talks about her boyfriend a lot, actually, to the point where Tony’s nerves are rubbed raw with how much he now knows about Thor.

Thor likes television, finds it amusing in the same way grandparents probably find their grandkids, like, you can enjoy them for a bit but then hand them off to somebody else once you’re annoyed or bored. He eats the weirdest foods, slug back kegs of the strongest ale God’s green earth could even offer, and seems to smile and forgive every belligerent asshole he’s ever met, Loki included, _everybody_ —except Tony.

As far as Tony’s concerned, the only good thing he’s learned is that Thor’s got a taste for short babbling brunettes.

Hey, somebody’s got to look out for Tony’s best interests. Might as well be himself.

“What’s somebody like you doing with somebody like him?” Tony asks finally, after the question’s been ripping at his seams for too long and it just bursts out, tearing his courtesy to shreds. Jane’s ears turn pink and she starts tucking her hair back behind them, nervously grinning as she looks down.

“I don’t know,” she says eventually. “We seemed to really hit it off, at first. He was just so charming.”

And Tony’s heart pumps its fists, soaring just a little. He knew it. He fucking knew it. There’s no way in hell this’ll last.

Jane gets her part of the project done, leaves him with a cute wave and a laptop filled with transform matrices that can adapt in nanoseconds during runtime. Tony gives the code to JARVIS and uploads the configuration into his latest suit, one with a miniscule lightning rod that can protract a half foot over his right shoulder.

The idea is that, if push came to shove and Tony needed an extra boost, he could wire a bolt of lightning straight into his battery packs. The rod connects the storm to the suit, and the suit knows what the hell to do with a thousand-thousand bonus volts of electricity without frying its little brains out.

Tony tries to test the new suit using a live wire from the Tower’s main line, but after the third citation from the city of New York, he’s told to find his own damn power source. Some place off the grid, preferably. Thanks. Tony tries using the arc reactor, but it’s so goddamn perfect as-is he can’t bear to make it cut an erratic arc.

So reluctantly he turns to Thor. And wouldn’t you know it, the blond motherfucker, this guy who smiles for everybody but only scowls for Tony, he actually agrees to help. Now Tony’s stuck in a workshop with this eleven foot tall amazon for hours every day, asking him to lift Mower and shoot sparks at his expensive-looking technology in the hope that it won’t burn apart.

“I’m sorry,” Thor says the fourth time this happens, hours after the first time Tony’s suit fell a crumpled pile of charred rubble. “I thought I had reduced my strength.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony grumbles. He gives up for now and grabs a beer from the mini-fridge and, belatedly, gives one to Thor as well. The thunder bro seems surprised by the gesture but he takes it, and the two of them head up to one of the nicer private patios together, set on wasting the last light of day.

“Why are you doing this?” Thor asks him after a long, strangely comfortable silence lapses between them. Something about this guy, it feels right. And Tony isn’t sure whether he likes it or not.

Tony shrugs, and gives an honest answer. “Because I don’t want to die.”

“So... being struck by lightning, this is a common death on Midgard?”

“No.” Tony hisses a breath, shakes his head. “No, me using up my suit’s last reserves, firing off repulsors until I don’t have enough power to walk home, let alone fly, _that_ is a common occurrence. And if that happens mid-fight, then I’m...”

“Ah.” Thor nods sagely. “So you think I can help, then? That Mjolnir’s power can complement your own?”

“Energy is a weapon is energy is a weapon,” Tony replies. He doesn’t know if it makes any sense to the guy, but Thor nods and settles still beside him, remaining long after the last bit of sunlight has dwindled away.

Thor stays and makes idle chat, makes Tony feel like maybe he’ll actually see something other than Thor’s scowls for the rest of the foreseeable future. He starts thinking that maybe Thor actually _enjoys_ Tony’s antagonistic, sarcastic brand of humour, that maybe Tony’s quips are endearing instead of this constant knife wound to Thor’s side, reminding him all too well of his asshole brother’s caustic wit.

Thor lingers, and reluctantly calls it a day only when they’re late into the night. The evening spent here, with him, it felt cozy, warm, and again Tony isn’t sure whether he likes that or not.

He hasn’t had that feeling in a while.

Cue this weird energy coming off Thor in waves, this vibe that Tony for the life of him can’t seem to shake. It shimmers in the air around Thor for days, makes the hairs on Tony’s arms stand up on end. He thinks Mulder has to do with it, except Tony feels it even when that weird-ass hammer is nowhere in sight. Whatever it is, it makes his stomach clench, his heart palpitate and his body sweat. Tony can’t even stand to be in the same room as the guy anymore so he goes, he leaves Stark Tower and stays in Malibu alone more nights than he can stand.

He’s felt this feeling before. Not a lot, but enough. It’s no good. There’s Jane.

Still, Tony spends an embarrassing amount of time rubbing himself off between satin sheets in his penthouse suite, thinking of trim waists and storm-coloured eyes, of bronze biceps as wide as his head, bulky arms crowding him against the bed as that god’s pelvis pistons, thrusts, his cock a hot, generous curve dragging against Tony’s—

 _Fuck_.

When Tony thinks he finally has control of his libido again, at least enough that he won’t embarrass himself in front of a foreign _prince_ , for christssake, Tony returns to New York to continue working on his beta-model suit. Thor’s fried a solid two-dozen prototypes by this point; he swears he can reduce the power of Mewmew, calling smaller sparks from it, but Tony can’t see to that.

“What if it’s mid-fight that I need you, hm?” Tony asks after practice one day, when it’s just the two of them loitering on the roof of Stark Tower, watching the evening roll in as usual. “If it’s mid-fight and there’s an army of whatevers on your back, are you really going to waste time hemming and hawing over proper amperages when you could just fire at me full steam?” Tony shakes his head. “No, this needs to work with full power. Go hard, or go home.”

Thor says nothing, but he wears this mournful look that makes Tony think of kicked puppies, of water poured into the nests of baby birds. Thor’s the happiest guy Tony’s ever known, and still somehow Tony’s got this sixth sense for bringing him down, for getting under that third layer of skin and just writhing.

Skin. Writhing.

Damnit. This isn’t what he wants. Jane.

So four more weeks and fourteen more prototypes storm by, and Tony starts thinking that maybe there’s normalcy here, amongst the flock of woe betide superheroes. He seldom spends time with the Avengers except for Thor, but somehow he absorbs their tastes through osmosis, passing idle orders to Pepper, things he doesn’t know why he wants in that moment of distraction, but afterwards come to light—Bruce’s favourite soft drink, Natasha’s favoured salad dressing. Clint’s premium cable channels no one in their right mind would ever waste time watching. Tony orders a case of the best booze he’s ever had the privilege of drinking and sets it outside a particular bedroom door, unaware of what he’s doing even as it’s being done.

“Umm, what’s this for?” Jane asks him the next day, waving a bottle in hand, and shit, shit, Tony’s a fucking idiot.

“Got too many. Just have it,” he tells her, and buries himself in the lab downstairs. Keep it and your fourteen foot tall blond god of a boyfriend. Enjoy them both with my best wishes.

Christ.

Turns out Tony _may_ have ordered two cases of the best booze he’s ever had the privilege of drinking. There may have been two, but by the end of the month there’s only evidence of there ever being one, thanks to Tony’s dedicated ways.

Tony sleeps in the lab now, his back slumped over touch pads, his head wedged between monitors. He’s given up coffee, keeps himself running on liquor, and any time somebody bothers to check if alcohol poisoning has killed him yet, pretty quickly he scares them away.

He needs to be alone. It’s better if he’s alone. He’s always been alone.

The suit, this piece of shit scrap of titanium alloy, it can’t do it. It can’t take the full brunt of Mjolnir’s power without frying Tony inside of it. The science doesn’t line up. It won’t happen. Best shot Tony’s ever had at creating an unstoppable repulsor and he can’t even get the project halfway off the ground.

Fuck. What a waste.

Even though Tony’s stopped asking for him a long time ago, Thor still comes down to visit. Still stays, still fires his stupid hammer at whatever Tony wants. He lingers, even after it’s clear that Tony can’t take anymore defeat that day and it’s over, this suit idea may as well be called quits for good, even then Thor stays with him. He hovers at the side of the desk, leans in to tap at the monitors in ways that Tony finds equally irritating and endearing.

“Stop it,” he mutters, swatting at Thor’s hand. “You’re gonna wreck my stuff, one day.”

Thor nods thoughtfully and leans back against the counter, arms crossed, eyes still boring holes through Tony.

Tony rattles a tiny wrench between his fingers, flicks it around like a pencil trick. His leg taps wildly, electricity scrabbles its needy fingers up his back, and finally he can’t take it anymore. “Are you happy, being here, with her? Why the hell aren’t you back in Asgard?”

Thor, for a moment, looks hurt, and Tony’s done it again. Kicked puppies. Drowned birds. But the blond answers eventually, shaking his head. “My brother is in chains in Asgard. It hasn’t... I haven’t had a home in a while.”

“Your brother.” Tony huffs, drumming his fingers against the desk. If Thor was a cool drink of water, Loki was a spill of grease choking in your throat. Buckets full of daddy issues, sneering arrogance and a need for grandeur... Looking at him had been looking at a mirror. Maybe that’s why Tony had offered the guy a drink, why Thor had such trouble keeping a smile around Tony. Why Thor kept hanging around, even if it was better for him if he stayed away.

Tony sizes Thor up, then, takes a moment to be brazen and let his eyes wander up down and all around. Fifteen feet tall and stacked with broad shoulders and thick muscles, a slim waist just perfect for pulling on hard, gripping tight as it gutted your breath, rolling sharply into yours—

“Shit,” Tony hisses, and looks away.

“What?” Thor asks, like at this point he’s still genuinely confused just what’s the fucking problem with Tony.

“Nothing,” he spits out, scrubbing at his tired eyes. “Just... Look at you. Look at that in a mirror and tell me it doesn’t feel good. Think of what it’s like for the rest of us, huh? No wonder your brother’s got worthiness issues. No way anything else could ever compete with you.”

“Loki was loved well,” Thor replies, defensive, stepping closer to Tony.

“Maybe, but not in the way that counts. I’m just saying, it sucks being the second favourite son. Hell, my dad made me that, and I was an only child.”

Thor tries to smile at the joke, but oh is it bent around the edges. The smile drops as he comes close, and Tony’s heart freefalls because suddenly Thor’s _close_ , his broad mitt of a hand coming to rest on Tony’s frail little puny mortal shoulder.

“People care for you, Stark, no matter how you try to dissuade them,” Thor says, smiling wryly this time. Genuine. Intimate. “It may not be in the manner you value most, but in those private moments, there’s always love,” he murmurs, and his mitt of a hand, his warmth, it squeezes gently before clapping his shoulder and pulling away, a gesture that might have been friendly if not for the velvet purr to Thor’s tone.

Thor leaves, the lab door sliding shut behind him, and Tony’s left fighting the flood of heat now roaring through his body.

Yeah. Like Tony wasn’t supposed to have any more wet dreams starring the guy after hearing him say _that_. Right.

Three days later, Jane leaves the Tower. She leaves with little warning, her bags packed like she’s not coming back, and Tony’s left punching his traitorous heart again and again for feeling so happy about it. He fights the need to run to Thor and ask what it means, so he settles for running to Pepper and asking her instead.

“She wasn’t happy,” Pepper says absently, continuing to read the newspaper over her breakfast. She scoops at her cereal, flips another slow page.

Tony fights back his urgency, keeps his tone cool and level. “Did she say why?”

A shrug. “I don’t think they had much in common, honestly. Jane, she loves him, but she loves her work more. And if she can’t share that with him...”

Oh, Tony wants to know, he has to know. It makes a world of difference. “Do you know which one of them called it off?”

Pepper looks up at that, gives Tony a peculiar eye. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“Oh no,” she says with dawning realisation. “Oh no no no. Tony, that is a very bad idea.”

“What? No. I know. Christ, Pepper, I’m not stupid.” But he is, oh he’s a total idiot right now. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Pepper, annoying angel she is, insists. “Don’t go after him, Tony. He’s a god, a literal god, and it won't do you any good to get your hopes up chasing after that.”

“ _I know_ ,” he hisses, and pushes back his chair for an appropriately timed huff out the room.

He snatches a slice of her toast for good measure.

Time passes, and Tony swears his mind is playing tricks on him. Thor, he’s moving around the Tower like he’s searching for prey, prowling in some primal way. He’s restless and moody without Jane to distract him, without Tony inviting him down in the lab to play spark-boom with his equipment.

Tony’s not letting Thor near him anymore, not when they’re alone and the only thing Tony wants to do is shove the man up against a wall and climb him like a tree. But Thor keeps looking at him, keeps perking his eyebrows in a ‘what’s wrong’ manner each time he manages to make eye contact with Tony, and Tony can’t take the tension growing in his body anymore. He goes back to sleeping in his room, if only because it’s easier to rut against his bed than the lab workbenches downstairs.

Tension’s mounting in Stark Tower for all of them, and when the time finally comes that another big bad steps up to the plate and knocks a coliseum-sized ball of dark-something matter into downtown Queens, it almost comes as a relief.

The Avengers are left scrambling for the back walls, trying to keep this whole clusterfuck from becoming a home run for the no-name super villain; they take down the initial baddie easy enough, what with Cap knocking him out with a well-placed shield to the face, but the dark matter whateverthefuck the baddie left behind, it starts congealing, starts _moving_ , reaching for buildings and setting them in oily flames.

Hawkeye’s arrows are just absorbed by the gelatinous mass. Widow’s shock makes the smaller globules jump, and Mewmew’s lightning seems to paralyze it for a bit, but that’s it.

Tony flies around, fires his repulsors, and watches the energy tear a precise line through the Flubber-looking motherfucker’s body. The burnt pieces falls away, twitching and dissolving, and Tony’s shouting, “I got this one guys,” as he jets around, sending pulse after pulse into the thing’s amorphous form.

It’s odd-shaped and alien, but not stupid; however it does it, the blob starts tracking Tony's path through the sky, sending whip-thin ribbons of dark-something matter after him. Tony dodges the first few, uses his repulsors and relies on Thor’s Meowser to keep the rest at bay, but the thing sends more and more ribbons after him, the sky blotting black with their strength. Tony fails one measly yaw to the right and suddenly he’s zipping backwards through the sky, his leg seized tight beneath him, the ground blurring grey and brown and close. The dark matter whatever, it starts pulling him into its body, wrapping those ribbons tight around him and just _squeezing_. Tony fires his repulsor, fires the laser-cutter, fires everything he can to tear this motherfucker to shreds, but it’s not enough.

Power’s down. Resources depleted. Game. Fucking. Over.

“ _Thor_ ,” Tony shouts through the comm link, not caring how panicked or uncool he might sound in the moment, just caring that his last breath is worth the effort it takes. “Thor, you better let a good one rip, and _now_!”

The creature’s form blacks out his visor, leaves his HUD lifeless.

Tony doesn’t know when it’ll happen, only that it will.

And it does. He feels the thrum of static build across his body, the ten thousand-thousand volt arc of electricity crawling through the creature and shivering down his spine. Tony doesn’t even know which way the repulsor's aimed. He doesn’t care. The HUD’s shrieking alarm in shades of red and white, and Tony watches his power supply count five hundred percent, eleven hundred—sixteen hundred, two grand.

Tony screams as the electricity fries his skin, chars his fingers down to charcoal nubs, leaves the fillings in his teeth wailing for exile. He bellows with all the air left in his lungs, one last Hail Mary before he lines the shot and fires a ‘fuck you’ straight into this guy.

He doesn’t know, doesn’t see if it worked; he only knows that he is light as air and he is falling. Eyes rolling back, vision blurring, body convulsing and foam frothing at the corners of his mouth—Tony’s so out of it he can’t even tell if he ever hits the ground.

Pathetic.

It’s two weeks before Tony wakes up again. Well, he wakes up before then, actually, but between the haze of morphine, the pansy-assed tramadol and the meloxicam chasers, he can’t even be sure what’s happening anymore. It’s two weeks before he _knows_ that, though, so maybe that’s what counts.

He sees Pepper and Rhodey, first. He sees their worried faces, downturned lips and red-limned eyes. They make him think of kicked puppies and drowned birds, and briefly he wonders if he’ll ever have an emotion he can offer people besides pain. He lets Pepper tell him stories about Stark Industries, lets her soothe her nerves with the routine of business. He doesn’t fault either of them for keeping their eyes trained on some point over his shoulder, for not wanting to speak about the broken husk that’s now his body.

Tony is, for lack of a better word, fried. Mutilated. Destroyed. Wherever his skin touched the suit, it’s black and red and peeling off, fleeing his body in droves. His hands, they shake with nerve damage he’ll never recover from. He can’t focus his attention, can’t remember half the things anybody tells him anymore. His heart feels like it’s abandoned his chest, packed its bags and left some arrhythmic hollow in its place.

He should be dead. Wished he was. With this amount of painkillers going on, there's no way a doctor’s letting him sneak a drink. And Tony needs one. Badly.

Widow and Hawk, Hulk and Cap, they all stop by. They chat and give their respects, keep his mind off shitty things for just that moment longer. Even Fury stops by to commend him for his efforts. The tide of well-wishers ebbs and just one conspicuous face remains absent; Tony’s heart could shred just thinking about it so he beats Thor to the punch and tears it up himself.

Worthless. What is the point of having one anyways. It only makes people hurt. Makes him hurt.

God, he hurt. Never has Tony felt so much pain. He waits until every visitor has gone before breaking down and sobbing, his wounds seeping through the bandages and sticking to the bed sheets, making it impossible for him to turn onto his side and hide his face in shame. A nurse comes and turns up his IV drip, and Tony lets the painkillers whisk him off into oblivion, lets them take an eraser to his existence and watch him disappear.

Maybe it was guilt that drove Thor away. Guilt could do a lot of things, make you run from a lot of people. Tony had learned that well, over the years. He could understand.

Still, Tony would’ve liked to tell Thor it was okay. He asked for it, after all. Self-destruction, it’s what Tony knows how to do best.

Tony wakes again at twilight or some other bullshit hour when the rest of the world is sleeping. His private room is silent, haunted only by the sounds of hospital noises, all dark except for the glow of his arc reactor and some other creepy thing currently hovering over his arm.

Tony startles, and his body immediately screams for it, so he decides to scream too, but a broad hand moves lightning-quick and lies carefully over his swollen mouth.

“Be still, Stark,” says a dreamy baritone, and Tony could sob over the sound alone. “I’m sorry,” it says, “but it will take several more stones before you are fully healed.”

‘What the shit’, Tony wants to say, but he’s battling such a strange brew of pain and relief that he only nods, letting Thor’s hand drop away from his mouth as he continues his foreign prince voodoo with that freaky glowing rock. They sit in silence, Tony absolutely still, Thor’s hand shifting in gentle lines, following the paths his pet lightning tore through Tony’s broken body.

“Am I dead?” Tony croaks, and his voice comes out like sandpaper, like deserts and shallow graves dug into stony ground. “This isn’t… Valhalla—that’s your thing, right?—this isn’t Valhalla, is it?”

Thor chuckles, a low rumbling sound, and wow, what a soothing balm. “No, Stark. Though you would have earned a place in its hall by your honours, you yet rest among the living tonight.”

“You’re thinking of Steve,” Tony mumbles. “Steve’s the good guy. I’m the jerk with a drinking problem.”

Thor half-grins, and shakes his head.

The skin beneath the stone feels cooler, a calmer shade of red, and when Tony squints his eyes and looks, he realises it’s actually healed. Pink. Healthy. The stone Thor’s holding, it grows dimmer the more Tony recovers, and by time its glow is gone Thor's already rifling through his bag for another one, pulling out a bright duplicate and setting to work again.

Tony watches Thor do this for hours, neither speaking, Tony’s attentions dozing. The morphine starts hitting him good the more time passes, pushing him into a pleasant fog. He waits for Thor’s hand to still, for his work to stop, before he reaches out himself. Tony’s hand fumbles, his fingers twitching on the sheets, a half-yard too scared to score a touchdown, but Thor seems to understand. He takes Tony’s hand, wraps those thick digits around him, covering him like a warm blanket. Tony shuts his eyes, and feels rather than sees the moment Thor leans over him, Tony’s eyes prickling wet as the god presses a stubbly kiss to his brow.

The knights in those dumb medieval movies, those guys poncing around with all that chivalrous shit, they all kiss the guy who’s dying. It’s a pity move, doesn’t mean anything, and Tony tells himself this again and again, even when Thor’s hand lingers in his hair, broad fingers tracing Tony’s jawline, warm hands cupping his chin, soft lips pressing in for a longer, lower kiss.

Still. Thor’s smile works its way under Tony’s skin, makes him feel warm and loved and welcomed. Tony lets himself have a moment’s happiness, and leaves it all at that.

Thor sits back in his chair and continues to hold Tony’s hand, even after Tony’s long fallen asleep.

A week later, after taking therapeutic classes he doesn’t need thanks to Thor’s weirdo rocks, Tony’s given a clean bill of health and booted from the ward. He rides back to Stark Tower in a limo, no less, feeling very much like a capitalist pig with the world in a choke hold. All’s as it should be, thank you very much.

Pepper’s eager for him to resume daily life. She throws him back into business like he didn’t just almost die by electric shock a month ago. The rest of the team, they treat him like normal too, and all in all he appreciates their unspoken agreement to write off what happened to him as a mass hallucination. It’s nice. Makes him feel special.

Tony cloisters himself off in the lab, working on his next project. His suit was fried last battle. Of course it was. He needed to make another one, a better one. One that didn’t rely on deadly tricks.

The evening rolls around and Tony hears the lab door hiss open, feels someone’s presence settle like routine in the quiet space behind him. Tony doesn’t turn around yet, doesn’t want to ruin the illusion his mind has woven for him, so he keeps busy on the suit, polishing up the last of the new headpiece before setting it on its display.

“Stark,” Thor says behind him, and Tony could damn near purr with how good it feels to be right this time. Thank god. This god. God, just make this guy his.

Tony turns around, wipes his hands off on an oil rag, and rubs his arm across his mouth. Thor’s standing there, legitimately standing, this time—open posture, arms thick at his sides, a considerate look of _something_ in his storm-blue eyes.

Tony feels again this thrum of electricity coming off him, some residual static that sets his hair on end. He wants to approach the guy, but the feeling’s too strong. His stomach starts churning, and his guts clench with some giddy form of excitement he doesn’t like because it feels so damn _good_.

Thor bridges the gap for him, walking—no, _prowling_ towards him, making Tony think of savannahs, of the sun beating down hot on a thousand pounds of muscle and pride—in careful strides. He takes Tony’s wrist and draws it outwards, twisting so that Tony’s inner arm is exposed.

Tony feels self-conscious. His heartbeat is the loudest thing in this room, damn near blaring out of his skin wherever Thor’s touching him, and it should be fucking obvious to the blond surfer god except no, Thor’s been blessed with either this marvellous sense of ignorance or chivalry—

“Your scars have healed well,” Thor says, carefully turning Tony’s arm this way and that. “I did not know if the healing stones would work properly on your kind, but they have surpassed my expectations.”

“Is that why you left? To go get them?” Tony asks. It’s obvious, he damn well knows this, but still he wants to hear it for himself.

“Yes. You were so… I’m sorry. I should have held back.”

Regret clouds those storm-blue eyes, and Tony shakes his head before he even thinks. “No. No, we said go hard or go home. That’s what we agreed to.”

“Mmm,” Thor says, gaze down, thumb tracing thoughtfully over the bones in Tony’s wrist. His other hand wanders along Tony’s forearm, curling around to cup his elbow before trailing back down. Tony swallows. He feels like he’s standing in front of a wildfire, skin growing hot and tight, throat itching for a glass of water.

He can’t take it anymore, can’t take the teasing proximity. He pulls Thor’s hand from his body, except Thor doesn’t let him go. That same hand he tries to push away, it comes up to cup Tony’s neck in an affectionate gesture Tony’s ever seen used on Loki, and suddenly Thor’s leaning down, his fingers sliding to the back of Tony’s head and—

Thor’s mouth is warm and soft, his lips dry and pliant, pressing into Tony’s in the most delightful way. Tony’s heart is performing drum solos, playing grand orchestral movements only he can hear. He’s too short to go with the clichéd arm-around-the-shoulders move, so he settles for wrapping hands around Thor’s waist and pulling, rocking the god and his godly mouth sharply into his. Thor chuckles, and the sound is honey warmth just oozing down the back of Tony’s neck, dripping into his guts and sugar-coating his spine. His fingers tighten on Thor, begin their eager search for blazing warm sun-soaked skin. Thor’s tongue darts out to brush Tony’s lips and Tony groans, damn near losing the strength in his knees when the heat from Thor’s tongue slides over his own.

The guy’s good. Oh, he’d have to be good. You don’t get to be a thousand years old without picking up some killer moves.

Tony breaks away if only for breath, his hands still tight upon Thor, and Thor’s cradling Tony’s head in a way that says he’s not done yet, no way, not by a long shot.

Panting, Tony says, “So will the workbenches work for you, or are you a ‘bedroom only’ sort of guy?” and Thor, this guy, this eighteen foot tall blond god with a swollen red mouth and lusty blue eyes, _this motherfucking guy_ , he just grins back.


End file.
